


Prologue to a Beautiful Catastrophe

by blackhorseandthecherrytree



Category: Nikita (TV 2010), Once Upon A Time - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 14:05:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/914075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackhorseandthecherrytree/pseuds/blackhorseandthecherrytree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>nikita!verse, reposted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prologue to a Beautiful Catastrophe

The new trainee had been picked up in Arizona from a prison hospital just after giving birth. The child’s whereabouts were marked as unknown. Jefferson tapped the paper.

His instincts called bullshit - but it wasn’t his job to ask questions. It was his job to train recruits. It wasn’t his job to have moral qualms. Moral qualms meant that you couldn’t serve Division, and not being able to serve Division meant death. Once Division got its claws into you, that was the only way to leave. He’d seen it more than once.

“Hey. You coming bowling with us after work?”

Jefferson signed the paperwork. “Sure, Sidney.” And then he stretched. “Just let me have a shot, okay? You roll a mean spare.”

-

She was prettier in person than she was in pictures, if that was possible. Good. That’d be useful for her. 

“Emma Swan, right?”

She straightened. In the pictures she wore glasses; now she wore contacts. “That’s me.”

He shook her hand. “Good to see you, recruit.” 

“Depends on your definition of good,” Emma remarked sourly, every line of her screaming that she would rather be anywhere but here.

That could easily be arranged, he thought. But she was just a kid, and a recruit. She’d learn. “I wouldn’t say things like that if I were you. Everyone here is very happy to have you. They might think you were ungrateful.”

She gave him a look that was too perceptive for an ordinary eighteen-year-old to have, and then stood quietly. “Where do you want me?”

-

Training Emma was an exercise in patience. She did what she was told, but only what she was told; she showed no initiative; she was always, always looking for a way out. She was a security breach waiting to happen.

“So let her run,” said Regina absently. “And then bring her back. Show her that there’s no place Division can’t find her.” She looked up. “You know that game, don’t you, Jefferson?”

There’s a new picture on her desk - her son, Henry. Regina hadn’t been pregnant. Her new cover was very sudden.

“I’ll think of something,” he replies.

-

Jefferson limits the amount of things he can care about. He has a daughter, Grace, who doesn’t know his face from a stranger's; he has his own life to think about, so he can protect her; and he has his recruits. His recruits are the only children Division will ever allow him to have. 

Friends are liabilities, when all your coworkers are spies, and love is a game for infants.

So when he lets Emma loose, he plays it carefully. Every lesson Division teaches you is meant to push you farther than you were before, a little more willing to go the distance, whatever it takes. Only and always for Division. Division is your god, your parents, your cult, the all-enveloping consuming absorption of everything you ever cared about into its screaming maw.

Emma thinks she can survive because she spent a year on the streets. Emma has no idea of what she doesn’t know. The beast, as it were, that will swallow her up and devour her whole. No more little red jacket, no more little girl - only Division, filtered through your soul.

Jefferson arranges for an ordinary headtrip exercise. She’s handpicked with a few of her classmates to go on a covert mission. They get separated and captured. He supervises her breaking personally.

Some prefer electroshock, some extended torture, some mental games. He lets one of the agents set her up, and then goes in. He’s always preferred the cleanness of drugs.

When she’s done talking, he knows what he needs to do.

-

“Emma. Wake up.”

All her senses come alive, the training of the last few months doing its work. She rolls, vomits, and tries to clear her head.

“You interrogated me.” She felt betrayal - not that she’d expected anything from him, but she'd thought he’d told her she should and seemed to mean it.

Her mentor knelt to her eye level. “Emma. I know about Neal.”

Something in her lurched and panicked. “What?”

“I know about Neal, and I know about your baby. I know about the Bug.” He held up the key with its keychain.

“Give it back!” Emma reached for it, and he held it away from her. She reached again, and the room spun. 

“Hey, hey. Easy. Easy now.” He pushed her down, gently, onto the bed. “Do you want to live?”

Emma’s come closer to death in her time at Division than she has in her entire life, she knows. They’re all psychotic murderers, or close. She knows she doesn’t want to kill.

She doesn’t know if she wants to live more than she wants not to kill.

“I’m going to explain this to you very briefly, Emma. These people do not care about what happens to you.” He pushed her hair back from her face, gently, like a lover would. She can’t figure out how much of it is a lie. “There may even be a few who would prefer you dead than otherwise. The only way you are going to survive Division is if you excel at the things they ask you to do. You have to make them need you.”

She felt something roiling in her gut - maybe it’s just the aftermath of the drugs. But maybe it’s the certainty that Neal almost probably thinks she’s dead, even if he did wait for her to get out of jail. No Tallahassee for them - not now, not ever. “Maybe I don’t care.”

There’s a pause on Jefferson’s end, and then he dangled the keychain in front of her. Emma snatched at it. He held it back.

“Do you want out?”

She thought about it, and then she realizes - yes, yes she does.

She wants to see Alaska. She wants to drive across Minnesota. She wants to see what Nevada looks like in spring, if the flowers she saw on a postcard once really do come out like that.

She wants Neal. She wants an explanation. She wants to find him and make him explain. She wants her baby.

Emma wants a lot of things she can’t have anymore. “I thought you said that was impossible.” More and more, she’s believing him.

“It’s not going to be possible for you, the way you are now. They’d catch you as soon as you stepped outside their control.” And then he gave her back the keychain. “But if you succeed? If you pass their training. I believe you could be the first person to escape.”

Emma looked at the keychain in her palm, and clutched it like a good luck charm. “What’s the catch?”

“When you fake your death and run, when you get out, you take down Division.” Emma caught her breath. “You destroy it, and you take no prisoners.”

“Why do you care?”

He looked at her with eyes set in stone. “They killed my wife.” Then a smile started to play on his lips. “And they stole your son.”

-

It is a year before Emma is promoted to agent. “Division has high hopes for your success in the field,” says Regina Mills with polished smiles and gritted teeth. 

Emma’s smiles are equally faked. “I hope I can make you proud of me.”

-

It is another two years of espionage and sabotage before Emma has to run, and begin her guerrilla war.

-

Soon, they team up with a woman named Nikita.


End file.
